Digital jukeboxes offer patrons a world of choice

The Sevens, a beer-and-wine tavern with an oak bar worn smooth by decades of drinkers, has two amenities that set it apart: a real cork dart board and arguably one of the best jukeboxes east of the Mississippi River.

With such selections as early Patsy Cline and rare Rolling Stones tunes, the jukebox -- more than the darts or the dark wood benches -- sets a rollicking mood that pulls people through the door.

This spring, the tavern took a leap into the Digital Age with a new Internet-fueled jukebox that can access hundreds of thousands of songs.

“I love it,” says James McCarthy, 39, a kitchen worker who feeds the wall-mounted machine $25 a night to keep his toes tapping behind the bar. “You can go back and forth from hearing old Aerosmith to all of the sudden you’ll hear C+C Music Factory to country-western.”

At tens of thousands of bars and restaurants in the United States, patrons can now listen to songs stored on hard drives or downloaded from remote servers. Some find the change a refreshing departure from the limited selection of records or CDs on old jukeboxes.

Others lament the transformation of an American icon.

They say the smaller collections of compact discs or 45s in traditional jukeboxes gave barrooms a distinct feeling that gets washed away by the new technology’s nearly unlimited choices. On the high-tech models, a touch screen has replaced the window where records could once be seen spinning, and there is now a slot where customers can dip credit cards.

The jukebox has come a long way over the years.

In 1934, David Rockola’s vending-machine company introduced a box that offered a choice of 12 songs -- the Model A Multi-Selector spun 78s. With radio in its infancy, establishments with jukeboxes became the places to discover new music.

In the 1950s, the production of smaller 45-speed records bumped the number of songs a jukebox could play to 100. Then the arrival of compact discs pushed the capacity to more than 1,000 in the 1980s.

Montreal-based TouchTunes Music has supplied 17,000 digital jukeboxes across the U.S. -- and provides access to a digital library of a million songs through a dial-up or broadband Internet connection.

Nostalgia has its place, but today’s music fans demand more, says John Taylor, president of San Francisco-based Ecast, which supplies the software and provides music for 7,500 jukeboxes over broadband Internet connections.

“The 100-CD jukebox maps the old world,” says Taylor, whose company sells 300 new Internet jukeboxes a month. “Our products meet what young people want today as far as choice.”

The contemporary Ecast models are like giant wall-mounted iPods, with high-resolution touch screens that flash with advertisements as customers use their fingers to troll for tunes. Inside each machine is a hard drive loaded with up to 300 albums and costing an average of 50 cents per song, with owners setting their own prices.

For a few more credits, patrons connect to the Internet to download a track from Ecast’s digital library from servers in Sunnyvale, Calif., that hold more than 18,000 albums. More quarters allow customers to jump their turn in line so their songs play next.

“It’s that choice that people get online, that they learn to expect,” says Taylor.

The new machines have reinvigorated the jukebox industry, bumping sales at Los Angeles-based Rock-Ola up 50% over the last two years, says owner Glenn Streeter.

There are, however, drawbacks to the Internet models.

Not all artists have licensing agreements with Ecast and TouchTunes, leaving noticeable gaps in the online libraries.

Others have complained that the Internet jukeboxes can offer some patrons too many choices. After too many cocktails, a barfly may subject other patrons to albums that were better forgotten -- perhaps a Devo, Meat Loaf or a nonsensical Frank Zappa record.

“The one guy who is a Frank Zappa nut is going to love it,” says Papa, the classic jukebox aficionado. “But everybody else is going to be saying, ‘What the heck?’ ”

At the Sevens in Boston, McCarthy says the diversity is the new jukebox’s strength. He no longer hears Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” at least eight times a night, as he did with the old CD model.